The Impregnable Women, page 4
The United States remained neutral, but not idle. The American Government, in somewhat ironical coincidence, had made a humane and self-sacrificing attempt to limit aerial warfare at the same time as so many fear-stricken people were destroying the instruments of it. Three days after the bombing of London, the President of the United States had signed a decree forbidding the export to any destination whatsoever of American petroleum; and forty-eight hours later his representatives had persuaded Mexico and Venezuela to impose a similar ban. Out of a world production of about 215,000,000 tons, this accounted for 150,000,000; and the European oilfields were meanwhile being ruined by saboteurs. Though the people’s rising had been undirected, it had not been wholly unintelligent, and the idea had occurred to many of attacking aerial warfare at its source. The oil-fields of Poland and Russia and Rumania had all been so badly damaged that there was little hope of their resuming production for many months; and wreckers had caused similar havoc to the wells of Iraq and the Dutch East Indies. And so by sanctions in the New World and sabotage in the old, the combatants’ supply of petrol was restricted to what they had in store and to the products of a little hazardous bootlegging.
By this unexpected dearth the warring armies were soon robbed of their mechanized transport. Motor-trucks and tanks and armoured-cars all died of thirst like cattle in an Australian drought; and the speed of the armies was reduced to the old pace of men and horses. They took to trenches again. On the Western Front the line ran from Nieuport to the Swiss border, and in many places trenches were dug in the ground that had been scarred by the war of 1914. The British Expeditionary Force occupied positions not far removed from those that had once been defended by Old Contemptibles and Kitchener’s Army; but with the material difference that they were now facing the other way round. They were to find, however, that Ypres was just as difficult to take or hold from one side as the other. The stubbornness of the French resistance there, together with the rain that fell throughout October, persuaded everyone of the folly of supposing that hostilities could be quickly terminated. So trenches were deepened, more comfortable dug-outs were excavated, and both sides prepared for a long and satisfactory war of attrition.
II
Nearly three months later, Lady Lysistrata Scrymgeour and Mr Eliot Greene were dining together at the New Carlton Hotel in Blackpool. Most of the male diners, in the crowded restaurant, wore either uniform or the evident mask of wartime prosperity. The noise, presumably of gaiety, was loud and sometimes strident. In nearly all the larger cities of Europe there were, on the same evening, similar scenes and a comparable note of stridency wherever the soldiers and profiteers sought entertainment; for in every country and every kind of human activity the war had destroyed all reason and moderation. As grief had become excessive, so gaiety had grown extravagant. As uncountable women were weeping in bitterness that knew no solace – mothers for their only sons, and girls for their dear playmates – so others, hot with the world’s excitement, were laughing and making love in a sightless frenzy. And because soldiers in the line were living in constant fear and the squalor of a badger’s den, so those on leave, and they who were under orders for the front, must fare as richly as they could, drink deep, and snatch with boisterous hands at every passing luxury. Good sense and temperance had been lost with peace, and now there survived nothing but extremes, of faith and ugliness, of fortitude and passion, of greed and lies and tenderness and cruelty, of utter misery and fevered glee. Nothing was the same as it had been, and most things were altered for the worse.
Neither Eliot Greene nor Lady Lysistrata showed any sign of gaiety, however. He, who was leaving for Germany on the following morning, wore a dinner jacket, as if it were a lifebelt thrown from the sinking ship of ordinary existence, and an expression of gloom that was nearly as dark as his coat; and she, who was almost too tired to eat, maintained with evident determination a precarious composure. From the outbreak of war she had ceased to be his lover, but he was still unwilling to accept his dismissal.
‘My dignity!’ he said bitterly. ‘What’s the use of appealing to something that no longer is? Dignity was my first discard when I joined the Army. I swore instant obedience to anyone who happened to have three stars on his shoulder. I took an oath not to reason why. And having abjured reason for England’s sake, it’s absurd to suppose I can recapture it for yours. I know that pleading isn’t the way to win anyone’s love; but I don’t want to win your love, I want to be admitted to it. I’m reduced in circumstances, you see. I’m like a beggar, grateful for scraps. I’d take your morsel of love, and be thankful, if you offered it with no more emotion than in giving an old coat away. A coat that meant nothing to you, but was comfort to the beggar who got it.’
‘It’s no use, Eliot. I’ve told you again and again that I can’t do it. And even if you’ve thrown away your dignity, won’t you, for my sake, have the decency to keep quiet about it?’
‘I may as well, I suppose.’
‘I’m so very fond of you. From childhood I’ve been fond of you. And we –’
‘We can still be friends.’
‘We could. And you’re very foolish if you sneer at friendship.’
‘There’s nothing wrong with it, except that it isn’t enough. No, I’m not going to be importunate again. I’m really quite happy. I’m off to war tomorrow. That’s enough to make anyone happy. But what I can’t see is why, if Tony was unaffected by our love before –’
‘Eliot!’
‘Yes, I know. I wasn’t trying to persuade you. When did you hear from Tony?’
‘This morning. They’ve had heavy losses, but they’re still advancing.’
‘Aren’t our Generals fine?’
‘Tony is,’ said Lysistrata calmly.
Antony Scrymgeour was now a Major-General, and the Fifth Division, which he commanded, was the spear-head of an attack recently launched against the strong French position on Passchendaele Ridge. The Division had already made a name for itself – the popular newspapers referred to it as the Fighting Fifth – and General Scrymgeour’s fame had grown correspondingly. So had his wife’s love.
She had ceased to be critical of him on the day that he was given a brigade in the first Expeditionary Force. She had, indeed, ceased to be critical of nearly everything except the iniquity of France and the neutrality of the United States. She admitted that the war was a tragedy, but she passionately believed that the only way to stop it was to win it. And because Tony was in danger – because he was a soldier, and soldiers were now of such paramount importance – her love for him, that previously was so impatient and capricious, had become whole and certain. It had acquired an almost idolatrous fervour.
The cause of her presence in Blackpool, with Eliot Greene, was the exigencies of the war. Within forty-eight hours of the bombardment of London the Government had transferred itself there. The move had been quickly and efficiently made, because it was according to plan. The numerous departments, services, and ancillary organizations of government found ample accommodation in the spacious amusement halls and countless boarding-houses of the Lancashire resort. Though certain hypercritical observers thought its associations might impair the dignity of administration, Blackpool was strategically an excellent choice; and none of the dozen or so surviving Frencl raiders, who still occasionally and extravagantly flew over England, had so far succeeded in reaching it.
Eliot Greene was in Blackpool for two reasons: because Lysistrata was there, and because his regiment was not far away. He, a natural Francophile, had been thrown into such insensate fury by the French bombardment of London, that he had immediately resigned his under-Secretaryship and obtained a commission in the Rifle Brigade. The violence of this behaviour, the desperate attempt to give his emotions the freedom of a pendulum – which finds fulfilment in either extreme – had for a little while brought him solace. But then the monotony of his military duties had begun to affect his spirit, and the constant instruction in bayonet-fighting – which grew in importance as the war became more obviously an affair of infantry – reduced his mind to the dimensions of an irritated shellfish. It hid within an integument of deliberate indifference, and he refused, as though he were cutting his oldest friends, to recognize anything in life he had previously valued.
Unfortunately his battalion was sent for its last month of training to Fleetwood, and Eliot Greene found himself within easy visiting distance of Lady Lysistrata, who had become an Area Commandant of the V.A.D., with headquarters in Blackpool. He had sought to renew his broken love affair, and succeeded only in aggravating his wretchedness.
Lysistrata, though by long habit fond of him, found his rather dreary persistence increasingly trying, and with difficulty maintained an exasperated sympathy for his altered temper. Now, in the crowded restaurant, she said, ‘You had better drink a lot of champagne, and see if that will help you. I don’t know what to think about you, Eliot. I’ve never seen anyone so much changed for the worse in so short a time.’
‘Not even in the wards of your hospital?’
‘What is the point of saying a thing like that?’ she demanded angrily. ‘There’s a war going on, and we’re in the middle of it, and we can’t stop it. Nobody wanted a war less than I did – I was practically a pacifist before it started – but now that it’s come, there’s only one thing to do, and that’s an honest job of work that will help to finish it.’
‘Send us victorious, happy, and glorious,’ said Eliot.
‘I suppose you would like France to win?’
‘Nobody can really win a war as big as this. One side will be the first to admit defeat; then the others will realize what they have lost, and try to conceal their despair in savage reprisals.’
‘It hasn’t taken you long to admit defeat.’
‘There were special circumstances that helped me to see things clearly.’
‘That means that I am to blame for your early collapse.’
‘No, not really. It’s the war that turned me into a sort of spaniel, whining for love, because now love is more desirable and more important than ever before. There’s peace and forgetfulness in it. A lover in the arms of his mistress is like a dead man at the bottom of the sea, and that’s what I long for. To let my spirit drown in the last stillness of love.’
Lysistrata was silent, and Eliot said irritably, ‘Say something, for God’s sake.’
‘It won’t help you, whatever I say ... Look at that girl over there. Have you ever seen anyone more beautiful?’
‘And look at the brute she’s with. Have you ever seen anything more revolting?’
The girl she had indicated was in the first bloom of her beauty. Twenty-two years old, perhaps, she was golden-haired, white of skin, full bosomed, her face was exquisite, her bare arms a treasure to behold, and her grey eyes under a calm brow were serene. The man she was with was between fifty and sixty, bald, red-eared, brutally fat, ferret-eyed, and vulgar as a pig in its sty.
‘That’s what we’re fighting for,’ said Eliot, ‘so that swine like that can furnish their beds with beauty.’
‘It’s horrible, I know, but it isn’t only in war time that rich men buy lovely girls.’
‘No, but it happens more often in war, when there’s easy money to be made for those who don’t mind the taste of corpses in their food, and when there are more girls for sale, because the men who ought to have them are in the trenches. Look at the profiteers! Couldn’t you tell them a mile away? Don’t you smell hyenas in the room?’
Gross or grim of feature, assertive in their demeanour, loud of voice, the profiteers sat at wine-laden tables, and with them were resplendent women. Scattered among them, the officers in service dress had the lean ascetic look – though some were little more than schoolboys – of an arduous priesthood.
‘A thousand years ago,’ said Eliot violently, ‘war could possibly be justified because it meant the survival of the fittest. But now it means the survival of the hyenas, and the fattening of those who’ve got an appetite for carrion.’
Lysistrata put down her fork. ‘Why,’ she asked coldly, ‘did you ask me to dine with you if your only intention was to take away my appetite?’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Eliot, and sat for a minute in melancholy silence.
The leader of the orchestra, which had been playing, unregarded, Schumann’s Pianoforte Quintet, rose and spoke into a microphone. The metallic voice announced: ‘Ladies and gentlemen. We have now a very pleasant surprise for you. Miss Rose Armour, who, as you know, is appearing this week at His Majesty’s Theatre, has found time to come over here for a few minutes, and will sing two of her latest songs. Miss Armour is taking a special interest in the National Fund for sending comforts to our boys in the trenches, and at the conclusion of the entertainment there will be a collection. Miss Armour has come over here at considerable inconvenience to herself, and I hope your response will be generous. Ladies and gentlemen: Miss Rose Armour!’
Rose was wearing a white evening frock that closely fitted her slender figure. She stepped into the blueish glare of a spotlight, and was greeted with a great roar of applause. She smiled, and bit her lower lip, and clutched her hands in front of her as though she wanted to embrace everyone there. It was her well-known gesture, and the applause rose to a storm of delight.
‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ she said in her sweet husky voice. ‘Or do you mind if I call you dears and darlings? Because that’s how I feel, and I just can’t keep anything to myself. Well, Mr Silberstein has told you that I want you all to help me send another cheque to the National Fund for Our Boys, and I know you’re going to be as generous as you always are. I can depend on you, can’t I? Well, I’ve only got time to sing two songs and the first one – I expect some of you have heard it already, but you’ll just have to listen to it again – it’s called I’m in love with a soldier now. And there he is, if you want to see him.’
She blew a kiss to a young fair-haired subaltern, who blushed bright red, and when the laughter quietened she began to sing.
And it’s true, she thought as she sang. It’s true, true, true, and she felt the stiff edge of Julian’s letter moving against her round breast. It had come to her dressing-room that night, and there were phrases in it that seemed to her the most wonderful she had ever read. She felt them like arms about her, and his lips on her mouth. I love you, he had written, I love you as you were meant to be loved, with all the strength of my body and the passion of my mind. I love you, he had said, because you are more beautiful than anything else on earth, and more kind. They sang in her heart to the tune of the silly words she was singing, but turned to the sweetness of a lark in the summer sky. Julian was her lover, and Julian was in the front of battle. He had written his letter in the acrid danger of a trench. He was fighting for England, and for her, and he loved her more than anything else on earth. She felt her body softening, desire with a morning softness woke in her limbs, as though he were there to embrace her. Her lover was a soldier in the front of war. He was a captain now. Captain Julian Brown of the Royal Fusiliers.
She sang another song, but her audience would not be satisfied. They refused to let her go. Waiters went round the tables, and their silver trays were filled with rustling largesse by the profiteers, and the officers’ half-crowns. A man with the blunt head of a tortoise and a laugh like the snarling of a baboon – a man with diamond studs in his shirt and champagne in a bucket beside him – shouted raucously, ‘How about A Man in the House?’
‘Well, that’s the very last,’ said Rose, ‘and you’ve got to give me some more money if I sing it.’ – Money for Julian’s men, she thought. Socks and cigarettes and Balaclava helmets for the Fusiliers who follow him into battle. There were tears in her eyes, and her vulgar little song was compulsive as a wave-borne air of the sirens.
Up in the morning and fry the bacon,
Make him a nice cup of tea!
Who would think yesterday I was forsaken,
Now I’m as happy as happy can be?
A major in the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, somewhat excited by wine, rolled a couple of pound-notes into a ball and, threw it to her. ‘It’s worth it, Rose!’ he cried. ‘You’re worth a war all by yourself, my dear!’
She laughed, and bit her lower lip, came swiftly towards him, put her arms round his neck, and kissed him. ‘You’re a darling,’ she said. – He was a soldier, she meant. He was Julian’s comrade, fighting beside him.
A bald-headed Canadian captain, waving a fist-full of dollars, shouted, ‘They’re yours for another, Rose!’ and the fair-haired subaltern, to whom she had pointed, got up so hurriedly that he knocked over his chair, and ran towards her with a pound in his hand.
She kissed them both, and a dozen others, till her hands were full of money, and still there was a queue of eager suitors.
The fat ferret-eyed profiteer who was dining with the handsome fair girl had pushed his way to the front of the queue. He flourished a five-pound note and shouted for attention. But Rose shook her head. ‘Soldiers only,’ she cried, and stood tip-toe to kiss a tall Australian.
‘My money’s as good as theirs, isn’t it?’
‘Maybe it is, but you’ve got to get into khaki if you want to be kissed. Come on, Gunners, your turn next.’
The profiteer continued to argue, but a Gunner subaltern pushed him out of the way and a Naval officer trod heavily on his foot. He began to shout – still flaunting his five-pound note – and suddenly those about him grew angry. He was pushed and jostled, and finally daunted. He reappeared, and glared resentfully at the still-seated diners. The fair-haired girl raised a long white arm and beckoned to him, but before returning to her he wanted to argue his case and justify himself. Angry and unhappy, he spoke to a middle-aged, quiet-looking officer whose eye he caught: ‘My money’s as good as theirs, isn’t it?’
The middle-aged officer, a tallish heavily built Scotsman with a red square face and short red hair, was somewhat embarrassed. He answered cautiously, ‘I don’t suppose there’s very much difference.’
